February has been another whirlwind month, and it seems like time is flying by these days. We began the month at school with the addition of about seventy Form 1 (freshmen) students who now make up about a quarter of the student body. I am teaching both biology and history to one of the classes, so my number of lessons each week has almost doubled. The students, themselves, however are wonderful. They are excited and enthusiastic about school, which has been a blessing and a huge encouragement for me. Anytime I ask my Form 1 class a question, immediately thirty hands go up waving wildly and echoes of "teacher! teacher!" fill the clasroom.Much to my surprise, Valentine's Day was a huge deal to our students at Icaciri, and all of them showed up wearing red shirts underneath their blue uniforms. It was hilarious as girls lined up around the school bus hoping to receive a card or letter from a "special" friend. Kari and I made cards for all of the girls on our soccer team, and as I went to class in the afternoon, I noticed that one of our girls had pinned hers to the front of her shirt! Sometimes the students make me laugh out loud.
One of the biggest struggles of the month came just two weeks after our new students arrived. One of the girls in my class, Evelyn Wanjiru, was taken to the hospital for a pregnancy test. When the result came back positive, her mother was called and came to Icaciri to get her. After talking to the deputy principal for a while, it was discovered that the man who impregnated her was the headmaster of her primary school, a man she trusted as an authority figure, and a good friend of her father. Whether or not he will be punished is yet to be determined, but in a culture where the attitudes about women and girls are still highly traditional, the word of a 14 year old girl has little weight against a respected older man. Later on the same week, one of my brightest Form 2 students, Beth Mirigo was sent home because her parents have failed to pay her school fees, and therefore she is not allowed to attend class. Education is the only way for kids in rural homes to get out of the poverty that cripples them, yet that same poverty prevents them from being educated. I sat outside for a long time that afternoon trying to make peace with this system, but I cannot get past the fact that it feels like students are being punished for being poor. We worship a God of love and justice, yet we live in a world visibly broken by inequality and unfairness. My life here brings about questions and difficulties I could never have imagined on my own, but I am learning to trust in the fact that God is big enough to answer the needs of a world that is tearing itself apart.
The last weekend of February, Kari and I travelled from our home in Gatundu to Nairobi to meet with the other volunteers, and head out on an adventure through Kenya. We left the city early Friday morning, loaded into two vans, and headed for Nyanza Province. We made it to the ancestral home of our coordinator's husband just before sunset. Their compound is up on a hill overlooking shambas below and just at the horizon you can see Lake Victoria, it is an amazing view. Ochillo's father had seven wives, and though his own mother is deceased, there were plenty of family members to welcome us, as always, with open arms. They had prepared a feast for us, and we tried a bit of everything, including fish eyeballs, which are a traditional Luo treat. Saturday morning dawned and we headed back down the hill into the village of Migori where we worked on building a children's home, picked maize, planted flowers, and painted a classroom in a local primary school. It was an action-packed day and we went home that night ready for some rest. Instead, we spent much of the evening laughing with the danis (Luo for grandmothers) who don't speak a word of English or Kiswahili, but who sang and clapped with us anyway.
Sunday morning we loaded back into the vans for a trip to the Masai Mara, one of Kenya's most densely populated game reserves. We left the Ochillo home at 7:30 am, expecting to reach our destination in time for lunch and a meeting with our coordinator, little did we know what lay ahead. Shortly after leaving Migori, our drivers decided to take a "shortcut," and that is when the real adventure began. We almost immediately got stuck in the mud, and an entire village showed up to point, laugh, and eventually offer some help. Unfortunately there were a few too many "chiefs" arguing about how they should help us, and we ended up stranded for about an hour. The journey continued in this manner for most of the day, but luckily we got better at pushing the van out on our own so each stop got a little shorter. That is until we made it about 60 km into the Masai Mara game reserve, home to lions, cheetahs, hippos, crocodiles, and an entire host of other wild animals. Just as darkness fell, we got stuck again, and this time we were stuck kabisa. For about two and a half hours we walked back and forth across the savannah trying to get ourselves out of the mud, hoping our noise would scare away any potential danger. Finally some rangers showed up, laughed a little, and pulled us out of the mud. We made it to our lodge at about 9:30 pm, approximately fourteen hours after leaving Nyanza!
Each day that I wake up here, I am thankful for the opportunity God has given me to learn and to grow, to see life in a different way. It can be challenging and overwhelming, but I would not change one moment.
Thank you all for your continued support and encouragement, your thoughts and prayers are a great blessing.
Grace and peace,
Lauren
